Harry C. Sax, MD, MHCM, FACS, FACHE

Harry C. Sax, MD, MHCM, FACS, FACHE, is Professor and Vice-chair of Administration in the Department of Surgery at Cedars-Sinai, where he leads quality, safety and performance improvement initiatives. In addition, he is a surgical physician advisory member for the enterprise-wide clinical transformation initiative, Cedars-Sinai Medicine. In that role, he leads the rollout of individual dashboards to the medical staff, supports best practices teams and works across departments and division to optimize high impact clinical service lines.

After earning a bachelor's in biology, Phi Beta Kappa, at Northwestern University, Dr. Sax received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins and completed a surgery residency and nutrition fellowship at the University of Cincinnati. He subsequently served on the faculty at the University of Rochester, rising to the rank of Professor where he maintained a National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded laboratory studying small bowel nutrient transport and developed an active clinical practice in gastrointestinal surgery. At that time, he attended the Health Care Leadership Program at the Simon School of Business and became increasingly involved in administration. As a general aviation pilot, he started some of the early programs in Crew Resource Management and checklist utilization in the operating room.

Prior to being recruited to Cedars Sinai, he was Surgeon in Chief at the Miriam Hospital in Providence Rhode Island and Professor of Surgery at Brown. At Miriam, he led the program to bring the first DaVinci robotics system to the the state of Rhode Island, including the development of initial credentialing as well as maintenance of privileges protocols. A prospective database of outcomes from robotic surgery was established, leading to the publication of highly cited papers. He also led data sharing programs of outcomes among several hospitals in the Lifespan system, leading to the development of consensus best practices.

Dr. Sax has published more than 100 articles, chapters and reviews in areas of gastrointestinal surgery, obesity and patient safety. He has been invited, through the United Sates and internationally, to lecture in areas of nutrition, gastrointestinal surgery, patient safety, and leadership development. He is a reviewer for Annals of Surgery, Archives of Surgery and the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, among others. He continues in a consulting relationship with the NIH, having served on and chaired multiple review panels as well overseeing the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery program as a member of the DSMB.

Dr. Sax provided medical services in Milot, Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, where he also was the Chief Medical Officer, coordinating over 200 volunteers and local health care providers. He subsequently returned to Milot on multiple occasions, to develop an inventory supply program for the CRUDEM foundation. During this time, he completed a Master's in Health Care Management at the Harvard School of Public Health.